SOUTH BEND — Mere feet from the main doors to the University of Notre Dame’s new Raclin Murphy Museum of Art, a stainless steel sculpture reaches 36 feet to the sky with a towering jumble of letters from eight different alphabets from around the globe.
“Endless” is artist Jaume Plensa’s nod to the “search for knowledge.” But it also beckons to the local community — with the traffic of Eddy Street Commons within eyesight — calling them to this brand new museum that is always free to enter.
Go inside, and across the three-story atrium, flooded with natural light that predecessor Snite Museum of Art lacked any of, the designer of the Vietnam War Memorial has left a permanent mark on a wall. Artist Maya Lin used recycled silver to craft this two-dimensional sculpture that represents the watershed of the St. Joseph River, with all of the wiggling tributaries that…